Category: Scottish Cuisine

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Turning And Turning In The Ardbeg Labyrinth, While Mulling Over Psychoanalysis And Alchemy, Distillation And Nuages, Yeast And An Equation, Pacific Northwest Forests And Weird Sisters, W.B. Yeats’ Visions, Haggis And Neeps, And Finally A Snake Devouring Its Own Tail Grooving To Funkadelic.

We’re told where we’ll end up.  In the warehouse surrounded by oak barrels aging smoked, fermented and distilled barley.  We’ll gather in a half circle facing our tour guide as she tells us what’s about to pass our lips.  Crossing through doorways, entering rooms and worlds we usually don’t see, usually don’t walk into and … Continue reading Turning And Turning In The Ardbeg Labyrinth, While Mulling Over Psychoanalysis And Alchemy, Distillation And Nuages, Yeast And An Equation, Pacific Northwest Forests And Weird Sisters, W.B. Yeats’ Visions, Haggis And Neeps, And Finally A Snake Devouring Its Own Tail Grooving To Funkadelic.

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My Life With Eggs Since The Beginning Of The Year. And A Walrus.

Like a golden eye slowly cooking in a sea of red.  Yolk and whites slowly beginning to bubble in a paprika-rich goulash.  Think Sauron.  Think an Eye of Sauron Yule Log.  For five hours. Eventually the egg cooks and rests in a bowl of peppery goodness grounded with a chicken stock.  Think of the beginning … Continue reading My Life With Eggs Since The Beginning Of The Year. And A Walrus.

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Cooking The Bog. Day One.

Think of a community of the living and the dead, mingling together in water, jostling back and forth with each other; bones and flesh, blood and fin, and all sorts of vegetal matter bubbling and foaming, slowly turning into a dense red bog.  In the beginning however, ah, in the beginning, there’s the fishmonger Melanders … Continue reading Cooking The Bog. Day One.

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Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.

Early 1960s America and Nietta Dunn defies Jim Crow laws by sitting at the H. Green lunch counter in downtown Lexington.  African-Americans may buy food, but they may not sit at the counter.  Here’s the thing, food doesn’t work well with fear and hate–not when planting, not when harvesting, not when cooking, and especially not … Continue reading Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.

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Sausages And Cooking Murder.

Louis Vincent Palliere renders in bright colors the infamous Slaughter of the Suitors” by Odysseus and Telemachus, note those gorgeous capes tripping hues between orange and red. I love cooking sausages.  All sorts of sausage.  Beef, chicken, lamb and pig; andouille, bloedwurst, boudin, bratwurst, chorizo, hot dogs, kielbasa, knackwurst, linguiça, longaniza, merguez, morcilla, saucisson, soppressata,  … Continue reading Sausages And Cooking Murder.

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The Anatomical Theater Of Anthony Bourdain

A pulling back of skin and forceps on flesh reveal an inner world of the human body in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.  Anatomy lessons entertained curious spectators throughout Europe from the sixteenth into the nineteenth century.  Such spectacles danced the edge of the sacred and profane as worlds under the skin … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater Of Anthony Bourdain

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Blood In The Kitchen.

My morning thoughts do not immediately turn to blood, but then I read an article by Katie Macleod which offers a wonderful observation of blood sausage and what we will eat when we’re young and what we will not in Blood for Breakfast is Wasted on the Young.  And then, all my thoughts turn bloody. … Continue reading Blood In The Kitchen.

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If On A Winter’s Night A Cock-A-Leekie

We open with Gustav Klimt’s Garden Path with Chickens (1916).  If a blog post is a path to a particular world of sense and sound, then this one includes a chicken.  And a cow.  And leeks.  Let’s walk further down the path.  The first words of a favorite novel open thus, “You are about to … Continue reading If On A Winter’s Night A Cock-A-Leekie